Don't delay

Tuesday

Nov 29, 2011 at 12:01 AMNov 29, 2011 at 10:46 AM

If a charter school has failed for enough years in a row that state law says it must close, it shouldn't linger another futile year, just because official 'report cards' take a long time to be processed.

If a charter school has failed for enough years in a row that state law says it must close, it shouldn’t linger another futile year, just because official 'report cards' take a long time to be processed.

That’s what currently happens, as the Ohio Alliance for Public Charter Schools recently brought to the public’s attention.

State law says that charter schools must close if they fail on enough measures, depending on the grade configuration of the school.

For example, a school that includes grades 10-12 must close if it receives a rating of academic emergency, or F, for two years out of a three-year period. But the closing isn’t required until a full school year after the failing grade that triggered it.

Three charter schools met the closure criteria based on their spring 2011 test results, but they aren’t required to close until June 2012. That’s because test results aren’t official until August, and forcing a school to close in August would be unacceptably disruptive, because families wouldn’t have time to choose other schools.

But allowing students to spend another year in a school on death’s door — Alliance President William J. Sims calls them “charter-school zombies” — does these students no favor.

A suggestion by Sims deserves consideration: Process test results from schools on the automatic-closure bubble first and faster.

If their results can be available early in the summer, the schools could be closed with ample time for families to find alternatives.

Students take the state-mandated tests in May and early June, and schools have a certain amount of time to submit their results to the Ohio Department of Education. The state analyzes the data, calculates passing rates and sends the information back to the school districts for verification.

The process no doubt is laborious, and the state is dealing with hundreds of districts and thousands of schools, including charter schools.

But, surely, the relatively small number of charter schools — typically no more than 25 — that are at risk for closure can receive expedited treatment, so that another failing grade could close them immediately.

The result would be fewer underperforming schools and less wasted time for families searching for a good education.

The Alliance deserves credit for consistently pushing for better oversight and higher quality among charter schools. Rather than defending charters indiscriminately, it has backed laws designed to improve oversight and weed out the poorly designed and badly run.

The idea to evaluate at-risk charters sooner and put chronic failures out of their misery more quickly is a simple and constructive suggestion that could benefit hundreds of Ohio families looking for better choices.